Bread booth closes after 50 years at Durham Fair

JONETTA BADILLO

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, September 22, 2011

DURHAM -- For the first time in over 50 years, the Durham Fair will be missing one of the few remaining booths that produced its products from scratch. Known for its specialty breads, coffee cakes, muffins and scones, the Durham Democratic Women's Club has decided to close its Bread Booth.

According to club member Ona McLaughlin, there are two main reasons why the booth has closed. She said there's been a "master plan" in the making for quite some time now. This "master plan" consisted of the town determining whether it should expand the town hall or rebuild a new one and the decision has been made to extend the parking area since it has very limited accessibility.

All booths near the craft tent on the Green have been removed and the members of the club had the choice of either renting their own booth or pairing up with the Durham Democratic Town Committee. McLaughlin said they've "always paired up" with the committee in the past, but agreed to take this year "to sit back and see how things go."

The new location for the Democratic Town Committee booth is now down the hill on Canfield Lane, which was not a good move for the club, said McLaughlin.

"The location is not good for us," she said. "We thought about it for a long time and agreed it's time to close our doors."

McLaughlin said the Democratic Town Committee booth, which sells Jamaican patties, and the club, which sold various types of homemade bakery goods, is not "compatible to be in the same booth."

"People would stand there for 20 minutes looking at everything there before they picked what they wanted," she said.

This new location will not provide the people with the same ambiance they received from the Bread Booth last year and years before that, she said.

McLaughlin said the group is not ending; it's just not baking or selling any bread at the town fair. The women's club will still be present at the fair, but simply to help out the Democratic Town Committee with its booth.

She said the club's mere existence was to support the Democratic Party in town and by doing so the club baked and sold bread to raise money for Democratic candidate campaigns.

"We sold well more than 1,000 loaves of bread each year," McLaughlin said.

Now with only about four to five out of 20 active members actually baking, she said, it's impossible for the club to have enough product to last three and a half days, which is a requirement for a vendor to participate in the fair.

"We may bake bread at another venue," she said, "but this year we're just helping out."

Jonetta Badillo can be reached by email at jbadillo@middletownpress.com. Text MIDNEWS to 22700 to get news alerts directly to your cell phone. Standard messaging and data rates apply.